


Quite the Story

by Capriccioso



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Librarian Dean, M/M, POV Third Person Omniscient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 20:56:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9256946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capriccioso/pseuds/Capriccioso
Summary: When Dean tells the story of how he met his husband, most people don't believe him. (Even though he already edited the supernatural out.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the original drabble that ended up morphing into Don't Leave Me, Baby. It's different enough to warrant being posted, and it's completely stand-alone, plus it has the distinction of actually being finished.  
> Love, C

Really he only finds the statue because of Sam.

Giant nerd that he is, Sam insists on going to the library at every possible opportunity. It’s not like the kid can drive himself; the library is pretty far away. (And maybe if Dean uses that as an excuse to spend hours loitering in and around the library to be close to his insanely smart little brother, who in a few short years, will leave him behind and never look back, then that’s fine, nobody needs to know that.)

The damn library is in an ancient building, all weathered stone and Byzantine corridors. (And if Dean enjoys getting lost in them, following a trail of books and subjects like bread crumbs, always shying away from really committing to any one, then nobody needs to know that either.)

September 18 is one of _those_ days, where Sam comes with a study group, begs to stay another ten minutes, another thirty, another hour. Dean doesn’t mind, he never minds, but if he doesn’t complain and grouse he wouldn’t be a proper older brother. (And if not being a proper older brother is a fear that grips his heart so tight it can barely beat sometimes then that’s nobody’s damn business.)

He wanders, on the 18th, as he often does. First, he stays where he can hear their subdued laughter, ducks in between history books, sneaks into mythology for a minute. But soon he can’t take the second hand embarrassment anymore; Sam is trying so hard to impress Jess, and always it goes slightly wrong. (And if his chest aches because his baby brother can commit to love so easily when Dean’s breath catches, his heart beats a frantic staccato, just at the memory of the look on Dad’s face when Mary died ... He’s happy Sam is fine, he really is, but sometimes he wishes he wasn’t broken.)

So he strays farther than before, gets turned around a few times. He looks at paintings (and Christ, the library is lending art now, why?), and comics and mismatched couches, wonders how a public library feels more like a home to him than the motel rooms of his youth. (And if their current stay at Bobby’s leaves him sleepless with worry about it’s expiration date then who cares.)

There’s a statue of an angel, life-sized, in the corner of a reading room. Dean was going to just walk by, continue his aimless strolling, when it catches his eye. He snorts; strange enough that the architect of this building didn’t know aesthetic from purpose, now there’s a decorator loose putting giant stone angels in the middle of rooms all willy-nilly. (And it’s pretty; all polished white marble and intricate detail, wearing flowing robes hewn from stone that look like actual fabric, like those old Greek sculptures.)

He just wants to kill some time, really, when he sits on the plush chair next to it. Dean studies the statue intently, reads the plaque on it’s base. He doesn’t know what he expected - an angel of wisdom, learning, peace? - it surely wasn’t the Angel of Thursday. (And it’s stupid, but also funny, it is indeed Thursday, September 18, 1997, and Dean will never forget to mention that when he tells the story.)

Mostly, Dean speaks to the angel because it seems lonely. They’re in a secluded room far out of anyone’s way, and he can leave, at least, surround himself with people, at least, when he feels lonely. (And if that doesn’t make him any less lonely, and if maybe he told the statue that, what, are you the boss of him now?)

Sam loves his brother, really. He does know why Dean insists on going out of his way to drive him to the library, to stay and lurk while Sam reads and learns and ‘geeks out’. Sometimes that knowledge isn’t enough to keep him from annoyance when Dean asks for the fourth time when they can leave already. He doesn’t know when it happened, but even Jess remarks on the change; now it’s the end of October and Sam came close (twice) to having to physically drag Dean home. (And Sam doesn’t know what fascination Dean’s found in a seldom-used wing of the library, what books he reads from his perch half leaned against a life-sized statue, but he’s glad his brother does something for himself for once.)

“I want,” and that alone is an admission Dean doesn’t make lightly. Maybe it’s that the stone angel is a captive audience. He also doesn’t know how that sentence is going to end, but it’s the middle of December and John is back. Barely, barely, he and Bobby talked him into letting them stay, for Christmas, for New Year’s, just a few weeks, just a bit longer, please, so maybe he won’t have time to find out anyway. (And if he cried, just a little bit, his marble angel wouldn’t tell.)

It’s the holidays, Christmas, New Year’s, and Dean should be cheerful, but he feels like a man living on borrowed time. Already he hears his Dad pack in the other room, there’s a banshee out there, somewhere. There always is, monsters don’t end, there’s an army of them, and Dean wants to be a hero, he does, but he’s also barely 18 and already so tired. (And maybe he doesn’t want to leave the one place he feels like himself, where he isn’t wrapped up in being a Hunter, a Soldier, a Brother.)

The library doesn’t open til the fifth and he’s already on the road before John slept off his New Year’s hangover. He’s gone and Sioux Falls lies in the rear view. Dean drives, and his heart breaks into jagged pieces that make it hard to breathe. That’s the gist of it. Step 1, hope. Step 2, clean up the pieces of your heart. So he drives and he doesn’t cry because his Dad’s sitting shotgun and men don’t cry. (And if he thinks about it, he really should’ve seen this coming, didn’t he muse just months ago how love feels like a sucker punch because nobody stays, not even a stone?)

Sam’s off alone, a banshee he says to Dad, face straight. He winks at Dean, later, certain that his brother understands, will let him sneak back all the way to Sioux Falls, to see Jess. (And Dean understands, and Dean teases, and Dean wonders if Sam will think he’s insane if he says ‘actually, there’s someone I want to see too’.)

Dean doesn’t remember when he started thinking of the angel as a person. First, he was a thing, a piece of unfortunate décor. Then, a sort of weird pet, something to vomit his feelings at, like a blank canvas, like some people talk to their cats. Somewhere along the way, it became a ‘he’, which is ridiculous because marble doesn’t have gender, because the generic angel statue with its flowing Greek robes and flared wings is perfectly androgynous. (And he writes letters to a statue, believes he’s insane, nearly stops, once, twice, a dozen times. He never stops.)

He lies to his father. Sam always had an easier time of doing that, so really Dean’s is just a lie by omission; he just fails to inform John that every word Sam says is made up. Sam, bless his moose soul, doesn’t even ask why Dean wants to go back to Sioux Falls with him, he’s just glad he gets this chance. Jess and him are long-distance, but he swears they will last with all the conviction of youth. (And Sam doesn’t even ask why Dean drops him off at Jess’, doesn’t ask where Dean disappears to every afternoon that they’re in town, because he’s sensitive like that. Because he hopes Dean’s happy, even if he wishes his brother would introduce him to his boyfriend, it has to be a boyfriend because a girlfriend he’d’ve met by now.)

Dean touches the statue a great deal more than necessary. He’s always been tactile, something that flourished away from John’s prying eyes, but where he used to lean against the angel to read, to think, he now touches entirely without purpose. His fingers skim the delicate marble of the robes. His palm rests on the plaque, on the angel’s calf, on his cheek, sometimes, when he gets too choked up to speak. It’s silly, it’s a stone. (And sometimes he thinks the marble is warm, but that’s the sun or the heater or his imagination surely.)

September 18 1998 is not a Thursday, but Dean supposes it doesn’t matter at this point; he’s already fallen in love with a stone a hundred times over on fifty-three different Thursdays. This time he’s even here completely legitimately, to pick up a lore book from Bobby. He sits next to the statue, leans his head against his angel’s leg, and finally, finally, he finds the end of a sentence started long ago. (And even if only a stone hears him say ‘I want to be a librarian’, well, it’s still a start.)

Sam and Jess talk about Stanford. They talk about it on the phone, make plans that do not include ‘extended road trips’, loudly, where John is supposed to hear. (And John is never there, so Dean is the only one who hears, and he knew, he _knew_ , but his heart breaks anyway.)

Dean doesn’t remember what they argued about, but Dad is piss drunk and one of them leaves. It’s hard to say who does the leaving, really: John storms out of the motel room first, but Dean packs his things and gets in the Impala and drives all night over three state lines. (And he parks outside a library in Sioux Falls where he falls asleep arms wrapped around the legs of a stone angel. When he wakes up he remembers Sam, and the guilt chokes him until he listens to the message his brother left on his voice mail; he hasn’t heard Sam this happy about something except Jess and Stanford maybe ever.)

He needs a job. He’s barely got a GED. He can’t really stay with Bobby because John would hound him about that forever. He’s stressed and scared and lonely, because Sam calls, of course he does, but these days Dean’s splitting phone time with Jess. (And every day without fail he sets aside an hour to read Vonnegut and Asimov and Shelley with a hand resting on marble.)

It’s September again, 18, 1999. Dean works two jobs, bartender, mechanic, and he’s ready to pass out, but he also just scraped together enough to afford his crappy apartment plus community college classes plus the loss of work hours, so he walks all the way to the library anyway. He loves his car, he does, but gas costs so much he might as well cut his own kidney out, save some black market shark the trouble.

For the first time in two years, a break in pattern. The study room in this forgotten, secluded wing of the library is not empty.

A man sits in Dean’s plush chair, a man in an ill-fitting suit, a tan trench coat awkwardly laid at his side. Dean doesn’t notice him, at first. What he notices is that his angel is missing, and, because he really doesn’t care about his Dad’s opinions on masculinity anymore, he makes a whimpering sound that he would admit to if asked.

The man looks at him in alarm, blue eyes wide and hair impossibly dishevelled. “The angel. D’you know where. Uh. There was a statue of an angel,” Dean says, asks, pleads, he doesn’t know.

And the man smiles, brilliantly, widely, breathtakingly. “I am Castiel, the Angel of Thursday,” he says, voice gravel-rough.

(And if one day somebody asks their friendly green-eyed librarian ‘how did you meet your husband?’, they will certainly get to hear quite the story.)


End file.
